We started up the generator for a couple of hours this morning till we were ready to pull up the anchor and take off for the small island of Tepuka, about 7 miles northwest of Funafuni. We wanted to check to make sure we had really found the problem with the water getting into the engine and that requires running it for more than a couple of minutes in the anchorage. We also wanted to make sure we hadn't hurt the prop when the bolts broke loose on the rudder allowing it to swing back and forth slamming into it. Also, the windlass was put under a bunch of strain when the chain snubber broke during the storm. I'm happy to say that after our trip across the lagoon, there appears to be no water in the oil(nice and clear), the rudder and prop works fine and the windlass got the anchor up with only a minimal amount of "I hate your guts for making me work so hard"attitude. We'd found some coral on the bottom and it didn't want to let the anchor go. It took some work and tying off the chain to a snubber and motoring around to loosen it, but it finally came up nice and clean. We slowly motored across the lagoon watching out for the occasional coral bommie(tall head of coral normally out in the middle of no where). Well, we missed looking out for one and the depth gauge suddenly went from 60 to 40 to 20 to 10 to 5 to 0 in a matter of seconds. Tracy slammed the transmission into reverse and brought us to a quick stop right on top of a BIG bommie. I could look right over the side and see all the pretty coral right below us. It was all stag horn coral, not huge blocks of hull destroying coral. We slowly glided right over the top only scraping the keel on few bits of the coral. We entered the location on our chart plotter so we won't hit it again. Since we had to cancel last weekends trip with Tev and his family, we rescheduled it for Friday and expect to bring them out to the island to swim and play. So far, we figure at least 6 people are coming. It's going to be a full boat.

Any way, we got here just after noon and dropped the anchor in 42 feet of water and I could watch it set from the deck. How cool is that? We haven't seen that in quite a long time. A quick lunch and into the water for a swim to the island for some shell gathering. Being seldom visited by anyone we figured it to be good pickings. Wrong! Lots of broken coral shattered into what looked to be almost like rice all along the beach. A couple of shells here and there but hardly worth bringing back any for our collections. We spent a couple of hours on shore walking around the perfect deserted island with nice sand and coral beach all along it's surf line. It was picture perfect right down to the palm trees overhanging the water along the shore. The coral we swam over on the way in was all primarily stag horn coral with much of it dead. No clue why as Tuvalu if well off the beaten path of cruisers, visitors, and cruiselines. We rarely saw another "white" person any where we went. Small kids just stared at us as we walked along the road.

During our walk yesterday, we did find the equivalent of what Tuvalu has for a Cinema. It's 10 by 10 foot room upstairs in one of the buildings in town. It runs two movies a night(even the new James Bond film is being shown). One thing we have found it that most bakeries sell out early so we were lucky to find a bakery that actually still had some bread at noon when we found the place. Of course, the reason they still had bread was that the owner/salesperson had closed the store and gone back to her other job in the complex. We got some help from a local and found her and had her open the store for us. We go a great loaf for just $3.00 Australian. After lunch, we returned to the internet cafes and got on slow internet.

So here we sit till tomorrow afternoon when we will head back to the main anchorage to await Tev and his family and our outing on Friday.

Stay tuned. Mores coming.